Article written by Glyn James

Nasdaq-100 open:

Welcome to Miami:

This week Jelena travels to Miami to take part in the Nasdaq-100 open, the most prestigious event on the tour with the exception of the four slams and the season ending championships.  The tour offers a staggering $2.9 million as prize money in this hardcourt / outdoors tier I event.  The event enters its 19th year this week and it was the first two-week tournament in which both men and women competed simultaneously.  The main stadium has the capacity to accommodate 14,000 supporters and last year's event had a healthy attendance of 265,407 over the whole 12 days.  No doubt it will be hoping to match that or even top that in this year's event.  The tournament director is Cliff Buchholz, who can be found at cmb@verinet.com.  A tournament as prestigious as this one is always likely to pull in the big names for sponsorship.  Aside from the main sponsor (Nasdaq-100), sponsors include the regular Mercedes-Benz, Fila, Head and Penn, amongst a vast array of others.

We've been here before:

This tournament, like many of the other past tournaments, is of very high importance for Jelena as people are wondering when her game is going to click back into gear.  At the moment, she's looked like she's in reverse, and that has been the case since the start of this increasingly dismal 2003.  Jelena just can't buy a win at the moment.  Past excuses of starting the year later, or having a bad draw have slowly been fading into nothingness as the realisation of what is going on is starting to hit everybody .... apart from Jelena it would seem.  Jelena is still confident that she has no great worries and that her game will come, but the question running through everyone's heads, including Jelena's, is WHEN?  Last year, Jelena slipped up in the third round to, yes you've guessed it, Anne Kremer, with a disappointing 6-3 6-1 scoreline.  This year, just reaching the third round would be some kind of progress.  The weeks pass and the situation becomes more and more desperate, but on the plus side, Jelena still has plenty of time and tournaments to put things right.  The only problem is the agony of having to patiently watch on and helplessly hope that Jelena will find her form sometime soon.  Will it be this week?  Well the draw could have some bearing on that.

The Draw:

Jelena is the No. 9 seed for the event, and so she could face some real class as early as the 4th round.  Here's how the draw looks: